Since its in­au­gu­ra­tion in April 2005 by the dis­tin­guished Pres­i­dents and Prime Min­is­ters of CARI­COM mem­ber states, the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ) has stood as a sym­bol of Caribbean in­ge­nu­ity.It con­tin­ues to strive to­wards its vi­sion to pro­vide high qual­i­ty jus­tice and fos­ter a ju­rispru­dence that is re­flec­tive of the his­to­ry, val­ues and tra­di­tions of the re­gion.As ar­tic­u­lat­ed in the court's strate­gic plan 2013-2017, the CCJ is com­mit­ted to at­tain­ing and pre­serv­ing pub­lic trust and con­fi­dence.

To this end, the court wel­comes op­por­tu­ni­ties to en­gage mean­ing­ful­ly with the peo­ple of the re­gion on mat­ters re­lat­ing to its func­tion and pur­pose.The court stands as a de­c­la­ra­tion and rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the sov­er­eign­ty and in­de­pen­dence of mem­ber states of CARI­COM.

It sig­ni­fies their at­tempt to sev­er the last re­main­ing ves­tiges of colo­nial de­pen­den­cy since it is wide­ly felt that fi­nal ju­di­cial de­ter­mi­na­tion by the Ju­di­cial Com­mit­tee of the Privy Coun­cil (the 'Privy Coun­cil') is in­con­sis­tent with our in­de­pen­dence and is an im­ped­i­ment to the de­vel­op­ment of Caribbean ju­rispru­dence.For­mer prime min­is­ter of Ja­maica PJ Pat­ter­son apt­ly ques­tions:

'Can our sov­er­eign­ty be com­plete when the fi­nal word on the law as an es­sen­tial in­gre­di­ent in the func­tion­ing of our State is still the sub­ject of ex­ter­nal de­ci­sion-mak­ing and in­ter­pre­ta­tion by a...court that is not in­dige­nous?'The im­por­tance of re­gion­al states hav­ing their own fi­nal court of ap­peal has been recog­nised even by the Privy Coun­cil­lors them­selves.In Oc­to­ber 1999 Lord Browne-Wilkin­son, for­mer head of the Privy Coun­cil, com­ment­ed:

'The prac­tice where­by a Court in Down­ing Street (Lon­don) seeks to de­cide what a coun­try in the Caribbean should or should not do is not prov­ing sat­is­fac­to­ry...'

Sim­i­lar­ly, Lord Phillips, an­oth­er for­mer pres­i­dent of the Supreme Court of the Unit­ed King­dom, has stat­ed that 'in an ide­al world for­mer Com­mon­wealth coun­tries–in­clud­ing those in the Caribbean–would stop us­ing the Privy Coun­cil and set up their own fi­nal courts in­stead'.

At the an­nu­al din­ner of the T&T Law As­so­ci­a­tion in 2003, Lord Hoff­man minced no words in pub­licly in­form­ing his hosts that "a court of your own is nec­es­sary if you are go­ing to have the full ben­e­fit of what a fi­nal court can do to trans­form so­ci­ety in part­ner­ship with the oth­er two branch­es of gov­ern­ment".

In­sti­tu­tion­al struc­ture­of the court

In es­tab­lish­ing the CCJ, heads of gov­ern­ment of CARI­COM mem­ber states, in their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­vide for the hu­man, so­cial, eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal de­vel­op­ment of the re­gion, were care­ful to cre­ate an in­sti­tu­tion wor­thy of con­fi­dence and em­u­la­tion.They adopt­ed the Re­vised Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas (RTC) that en­shrines the Court and sub­se­quent­ly agreed to the Agree­ment Es­tab­lish­ing the CCJ (the 'Agree­ment').

The agree­ment is a treaty that binds all the sig­na­to­ry par­ties. It al­lowed sig­na­to­ries to en­ter reser­va­tions to the court's ap­pel­late ju­ris­dic­tion. Nei­ther Ja­maica nor T&T, the most pop­u­lous Eng­lish speak­ing states, en­tered any such reser­va­tion.The Gov­ern­ments of the re­gion al­so cre­at­ed for the court a unique scheme for its fund­ing.

Mem­ber states agreed that US$100 mil­lion should be bor­rowed and placed in the hands of care­ful­ly se­lect­ed non-gov­ern­ment trustees to be in­vest­ed by them so that the re­turns from the in­vest­ments could sup­port the op­er­a­tion of the court in per­pe­tu­ity.The scheme has worked well and with­in the next year the US$100 mil­lion would have been com­plete­ly re­paid.The trust fund to­day (nine years af­ter the court was in­au­gu­rat­ed) stands in the ap­prox­i­mate sum of US$100 mil­lion.

The process­es for the se­lec­tion and ap­point­ment of the pres­i­dent and judges of the court are de­lib­er­ate­ly struc­tured to en­sure the high­est lev­els of ju­di­cial in­de­pen­dence.Ju­di­cial va­can­cies are ad­ver­tised and ap­point­ments are made on the ba­sis of ap­pli­ca­tion to and in­ter­view and se­lec­tion by a broad based non-gov­ern­men­tal body–The Re­gion­al Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vices Com­mis­sion (RJLSC).

Up­on rec­om­men­da­tion by the RJLSC, the pres­i­dent is ap­point­ed by the Con­fer­ence of Heads of Gov­ern­ment of CARI­COM for a non-re­new­able term of sev­en years.There is no re­quire­ment that the pres­i­dent should be a mem­ber of the Privy Coun­cil. The process is en­tire­ly trans­par­ent and based on mer­it.The cri­te­ria for se­lec­tion are all set out in the agree­ment.

The CCJ in the re­gion

The es­tab­lish­ment and con­tin­ued op­er­a­tion of the CCJ have been sup­port­ed by mem­ber states of CARI­COM in many ways.

These in­clude the rat­i­fi­ca­tion of the RTC and the agree­ment; the cre­ation and fund­ing of the trust fund; the suc­cess­ful lob­by­ing ef­forts of T&T to site the court in this coun­try (which ef­forts were twinned with an as­sur­ance by the then Prime Min­is­ter that the State would with­draw its pro­pos­al to house the court if it did not ful­fil its oblig­a­tions to ac­cede both to the orig­i­nal and ap­pel­late ju­ris­dic­tions of the court); and the pro­vi­sion by T&T of a suit­able build­ing and an­cil­lary ser­vices for the court in keep­ing with its host coun­try agree­ment.

This coun­try, its cor­po­rate na­tion­als, and some of its at­tor­neys, in­clud­ing At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Ram­lo­gan, have ap­peared in cas­es be­fore the court. The court reg­u­lar­ly hears ap­peals from Guyana, Bar­ba­dos and Be­lize and the feed­back re­ceived on the sat­is­fac­tion of court users has been pos­i­tive.On­ly re­cent­ly the Prime Min­is­ter of T&T, the Ho­n­ourable Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, made it clear that it is in­evitable that T&T will join the CCJ in its ap­pel­late ju­ris­dic­tion.

The Prime Min­is­ter of Ja­maica and of­fi­cials of oth­er mem­ber states have made sim­i­lar state­ments re­flect­ing their con­fi­dence in the CCJ and their in­ten­tion to make the court the fi­nal ar­biter of their dis­putes in both the do­mes­tic and re­gion­al spheres.These ex­pres­sions of sup­port and con­fi­dence at­test to the su­pe­ri­or lev­el of ac­cess to jus­tice of­fered by the CCJ.

The op­por­tu­ni­ty af­ford­ed de­serv­ing lit­i­gants, who lack the means to take their ap­peals to the Privy Coun­cil, to ap­pear be­fore a well-re­spect­ed Caribbean fi­nal court, is a ben­e­fit that should be wel­comed by all. It marks an­oth­er vi­tal step in the mat­u­ra­tion of our post-colo­nial so­ci­eties.

Re­gion of ex­cel­lence

The CCJ there­fore re­flects the progress of the peo­ple of a re­gion that boasts a wealth of learn­ing, tal­ent and re­sources.Sir Shri­dath Ram­phal once high­light­ed: 'From our Caribbean shores we have sent judges to the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice, the Pres­i­den­cy of the Unit­ed Na­tions Tri­bunal on the Law of the Sea; to the In­ter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court and the In­ter­na­tion­al Court for the for­mer Yu­goslavia and, of course, to the In­ter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Tri­bunal for Rwan­da...'